And so was his beard! My orders had been followed more strictly than I had intended. The visitors had been snatched from their chariots with nothing but the clothes they wore, buckskins now unbearably filthy and sweat-stained. Not merely guns, but razors also had been left behind at the borders of the grasslands, and herdmen had no razors to lend. All three men were thickly whiskered. They would certainly have been rushed along at the fastest pace they could endure, and the length of those beards brought home to me the huge extent of my domain. Sometimes even I forget how much land I rule.
Exhausted and travel-soiled, those angels were angry. They knew that I had deliberately flaunted my power to humiliate them. They were impressed as well as frightened, and they hated me for it. They must have been thinking that the Great Compact had failed at last. Never had a despot risen to such power before.
Their arduous trek along the herdline had brought them through half the population of the grasslands. They had seen a teeming, civilized people, a prosperous nation where they had expected only scattered bands of savages. At every rest stop—while eating, then falling into exhausted sleep in the little tent settlements—they would certainly have heard the singing. Some of my psalms would have shocked them greatly, perhaps as much as their glimpses of the first real army ever raised on Vernier. And if many of the troops they had seen ride by in the distance had happened to be the same troops going around in circles…well, I had been trained by one of the sharpest traders who ever chewed a paka leaf.
Stiffly upright on their chairs, my guests glared at me. I probably did not meet their expectations. My long white hair and long white beard would seem bizarre to them. So would my golden robe—not to mention my ugly bare feet resting on the embroidered footstool before the throne.
I have had long practice in overawing herdmen, time to develop a certain presence. Ayasseshas would say I had just grown more pompous, I suppose, but it works. The angels were impressed.
I let them gaze awhile. The wind thumped the roof, and a steady clinking floated up from the smithy halfway down the hill. Much nearer, the thunk! of arrows told of archery practice in progress.
“Tell me news of Heaven,” I said when the angels’ eyes began to wander. “Who is Michael now?”
Indigo thrust a hand in his pocket. Instantly twenty-five spears were aimed at his heart. He froze. I gestured, and the twenty-five spears returned to vertical, butts thumping the rug simultaneously.
The angels all turned very red.
“You do not trust angels, Herdmaster?”
“Sir, I trust you implicitly,” I said with total falsehood. “My lads here are a little nervous. Just don’t move suddenly, and I think everything will be all right…and be careful how you address me. Herdmaster is a relatively junior rank in my army.”
“How do you wish to be addressed, then?” Indigo inquired, his eyelids lowered in fury.
“My people call me—but you wouldn’t like that, I suppose. Choose one of my earlier names, for I have had many—Knobil, Golden, herdbrat, dross, Nob Bil, Old Man, Roo…and I suppose I was indeed Herdmaster, briefly—before my apotheosis. Please yourselves.” I smiled graciously.
“Knobil, then!” Gritting his teeth and moving slowly, Indigo drew a paper from his pocket. “Holy Michael sent this message.”
A sword-girt youngster twice his size took the letter and brought it over to me, kneeling as he offered it. There was no name on the outside. I broke the seal and found four words within. I had read nothing for so long that at first they were only squiggles, and blurred squiggles at that. I held the message out at arm’s length and forced old eyes and brain to work.
Shaky handwriting: Remember Silent Lover. Quetti.
I leaned back on my throne and thought about that. So my friend had survived the Great Flood, and I was glad. He had reached the top, obviously, which was not surprising. He didn’t trust his messengers, which was. He was warning me of treachery, and perhaps even admitting that he might have to betray me himself.
Heaven must be divided as never before. Had Quetti seen the same opportunity for treachery that I had, or was he worried only about my life, which was a trivial thing? He must be old now, I realized, and I was much older.
“I shall not attempt to pen a reply,” I announced. “Please inform His Holiness that I thank him for his greetings, and I wish him the long life and contentment he so well deserves.”
Indigo nodded his head warily. All three angels were as taut as bowstrings.
“Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?” I asked cheerfully.
“You have used violence against a tribe of miners,” Indigo said bluntly.
“I massacred them,” I admitted. “It was bloody.”
“How many men did you lose?” Obviously subtlety was not Indigo’s greatest talent, and I wondered if Quetti had chosen him for that reason.
“Only fifty-two,” I said and enjoyed the reaction. To lose fifty-two men would cripple Heaven completely.
“Only?”
“I have thousands—but I grudge every one, I assure you. I was angry even to lose any of the slaves we were trying to rescue.”
“Violence is a breach of the Great Compact!”
“Not always,” I said mildly. “Section Six extends the right of self-defense to include vengeance when there are no angels within call. I once suffered grievously from those ants.”
The three angels exchanged glances. Perhaps they had known which tribe I had struck and had anticipated that defense. My history was on file in Heaven, and they should have known not to expect an ignorant savage headman.
“There are other restrictions,” Indigo said frigidly. “And the reason that there were no angels within call was that you were keeping them away. But even if Heaven could overlook that attack as having been provoked, there have been three other mine attacks since.”
“Five, now. It has taken you long enough to get here.” I nibbled a date with my few remaining teeth. “But the other mines submitted to me voluntarily and released their slaves. No blood at all was shed. No violence.”
“You threatened them with hundreds of armed men!”
“Thousands.”
“Are you saying that you were bluffing?”
I shrugged and dropped the pit into a convenient silver bowl. “It’s a hypothetical question.”
“One of those mines was outside the normal range of your group.”
I nodded. “Two of them, now. And there are many others still within my grasp. I am planning to strike at all of them.”
The angels recoiled like startled cats. Heaven had never been openly defied like this before. “You are telling us that we can’t stop you?” demanded one of the others, a thick-chested seaman, Two-blue-white. Indigo glared briefly at him.
“More or less,” I said. “If Heaven kept the ants under control, then the problem would not arise. Slavery I will not tolerate! Do you defend it?”
“Of course not!” That was Two-blue again.
I let the conversation lapse for a moment. I was unused to such excitement, but I must push on quickly while the angels’ weariness gave me a small advantage—so said the trader in me. I had made Haniana promise to stay away, but she would promise anything. If she thought I was overtaxing my strength, she would come scuttling in like a mother platypod defending her larvae. Where would my grandeur be then?
The canopy thumped gently, and the blacksmiths clinked. Most nerve-scraping of all, though, was the monotonous thud of arrows drifting up from the butts. It apparently vexed Indigo.